Weekend Thoughts for 4/10/10

Baseball season is about to complete its' first full week, and already I've seen a fair amount of it. Mostly on tv of course, but we have already attended a local game.

• Here in Savannah are the Single-A affiliate of the New York Mets, the Savannah Sand Gnats. Their opening night was on Thursday, which we went to. The stadium is a much older park, probably built sometime in the 40s or 50s if I were to guess. 
• The Sand Gnats won the game, although we left during a rain delay. We had known that there was a likelihood of rain, as there was a massive thunderstorm front that would be coming through the area sometime in the late evening.
• The rain was not a huge deal, as nearly the entire seating area has a full roof covering it, and we had chosen an excellent location to sit.
• The weather here, with the exception of that set of storms on Thursday night, has been clear and nice, with temps in the high 70s and low 80s pretty much every day.
• We made a trip out yesterday to the Strawberry Festival out at Ottawa Farms in nearby Bloomingdale. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the entertainment we thought it would be. Shortly after we got there, the transformer powering nearly everything blew out, and the one thing we had really been looking forward to (strawberry ice cream) could not be dispensed unfortunately, since the machine had no power to give ice cream. 
• You could hear in the background the Civil War re-enacters, but they didn't really appear to have a set schedule as to when they were going to be doing things, so we didn't really see any of them.

We are also looking for older photos of the Savannah area for a project we're thinking of trying out. If you know where we can get some photos that are public domain, please let us know!

Weekend Thoughts for 4/3/10

Not a whole lot has been going on around here, but there's always something to write about...

• Congrats to Dale and Sara. We went to their wedding last night out on Tybee Island, and had the most amazing meal afterward. 
• The weather out here has been extremely nice for the past week. Unseasonably warm they say, but I will take temps in the 80's every day.
• I have been tinkering with some new recipes, and found a really great recipe for calzones. So wonderful.
• We went over to Beaufort, South Carolina today. It's a little over an hour away from Savannah, and is a decent size town. Out at the edge of the city is Hunting Island, which is home to a state park with a very nice beach. 
• Nearly all of the beaches here have been very busy over the last week because of the nice weather, and the added free time of all the Savannah students on Spring Break. To the point of causing massive traffic coming back off of Tybee Island.
• Our home theater system that we received as a wedding gift has the ability to stream Netflix directly over the internet. It is a WONDERFUL feature. Well worth the monthly cost of Netflix at this point to use it for as much programming as is available.
• Baseball season starts officially on Sunday, and it feels like it has been a long time coming at this point. Go A's!

St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

As I mentioned before, St. Patrick's Day is one of the most celebrated holidays in Savannah. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but at some point a rather large Irish population took up residence in Savannah, and they've been celebrating ever since.

Some facts about the celebration:

• The parade has been run 186 times since its' inception.
• They have a grand marshal of the parade, who is selected by the St. Patrick's Day parade committee.
• A majority of the schools in the area close as there are quite a few students that are in the parade.
• Many of the more well-known Irish families will march in the parade as a group.
• The parade's planning and organization goes on for nearly the entire year through.

St. Patrick's Day coverage on the TV started with the Catholic Mass at St. John the Baptist church in downtown Savannah, which also is the starting point for the parade afterward. This year, they also had some church members who were attending from a parish in Ireland. The father giving the service was making jokes about the difficulty they were having in getting there due to inclement weather and flights.

Once the service was over, the parade started about 15 minutes later. I decided to watch it on television instead of going down there, as it would have been a huge hassle to get down there and find parking since almost all of the main streets were blocked off for the parade itself.

The channel I was watching had two commentators, both of whom have been attending the parade for quite a long time. They were actually set up with their booth right on the parade route, so that they could converse back and forth with the marchers as they went by.  The weather was overcast for most of the parade, but the rain didn't come until after the parade had long been over.

Some of the highlights of the parade itself:

• There was a man marching in his 80th parade. He is 96 years old.
• There were marching bands from all over Georgia, Florida, and even one from Virginia.
• There was a float for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who were in uniform as well.
• A majority of the Rangers stationed at Hunter Army Air Field marched, along with both their outgoing and incoming commanding officers.
• Wells Fargo had their stagecoach, along with Clydesdale horses pulling it.
• Based on the commentary, it seemed like the broadcasters had already started drinking despite the early hour.

Once the parade was over, the party pretty much continued the rest of the evening in downtown, with nearly all the main streets remaining closed until the following morning. For a lot of people in the town, it really seemed like St. Patrick's Day was the start to their weekend, despite it being on a Wednesday. It was a very interesting experience, and maybe someday I will have to go to the parade itself.

Weekend Thoughts for 3/14/2010

The city is in full-fledged St. Patrick's Day celebration mode, as the first sets of activities were yesterday. They were not kidding when they said that they celebrate St. Patrick's day like nobody else.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• We went downtown on Saturday night with some of Brynn's co-workers, and the downtown was about as busy as I would have expected for a Saturday night. The part I was not expecting was how decked out in green everyone already was.
• We decided to walk around early Sunday afternoon downtown, and did our first exploring of River St. As you might expect, this is the road that is directly adjacent to the Savannah River. Lots of little shops and restaurants, with a feel similar to the one given off by Old Sacramento. In nearly every store front: St. Patrick's Day garb.
• Many of the fountains in the downtown area, including the large one in Forsyth Park, have already been dyed green in anticipation of Wednesday.
• The actual parade through downtown Savannah will start at 10 AM on Wednesday. As a result of this, many downtown businesses that will not profit from being open that day will be closed or on reduced hours (as is the case with Regions Bank, who will be open from 9 AM to 10 AM that day.)
• For the most part, the weather here has been pretty sunny this week. The humidity is slowly starting to pick up, and I can feel it when I walk out of the house if it's higher than I expected. A lot of it reminds me of the weather in Hawaii, but not quite as warm necessarily.
• I attended an orientation meeting with the Savannah chapter of the Red Cross so that I could start doing some volunteer work here. They need volunteers a lot more than my previous chapter in Murray did(not that Murray doesn't). I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but the Savannah chapter is responsible for an area from the Florida border south to the South Carolina border in the north east, and part of the way across the state back towards Atlanta. This area includes over 1.1 million residents. So it sounds like they're going to have a lot of good work for me to do.
• I am also waiting to hear back from Accountemps about some short-term accounting work here as well. The city of Savannah has almost 300,000 people, so they are in need of some accounting temps as well. Wish me luck on that one.
• As you probably read last week, I've started writing for a fantasy sports blog called FakeTeams. If fantasy baseball is something that interests you, check it out, as we're gearing up for the start of the season with our positional rankings.

Savannah Dan's Tour

For Brynn's birthday, we scheduled ourselves to go on a tour of downtown Savannah. After some research, the tour I chose was Savannah Dan. It was a walking tour, and was extremely interesting.

Savannah Dan models himself a Southern gentleman, and definitely looks the part. It was a windy day here on Saturday, and he walked up to the meeting area wearing a long overcoat, with a seersucker white pin-striped suit underneath. And of course the Havana hat to complete the outfit.

His tour was extremely interesting, and he was extremely knowledgeable about both the history of Savannah and some of the people that helped to tell its story.

The picture to the left is of a monument in Wright Square. The monument is to honor one of Savannah's more important residents, William Washington Gordon. However, they came to find out shortly after it was built that the remains of the Indian chief who had welcomed to the colonists were actually underneath the monument. Oops.

The story actually becomes more interesting at this point. One of Gordon's relatives (a grandson I believe) had "married a Yankee", and was insulted that the Indian chief Tomochichi had been so ignored. Apparently she didn't like her in-laws, and that was one of her main reasons for complaining so vehemently about this.

As a result, she did this. This giant piece of granite is in the same square, and is from Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. It apparently riled up her in-laws to no end. When the seller of the stone found her what she wanted the stone for, he set the price at $1, payable on Judgment Day.

Now this, is a dirt mound. Among the many movies that were filmed in Savannah was Forrest Gump. That dirt mound is where the bus bench was that Forrest sat on while telling his story. You'll notice that there's no bench. And apparently there never has been. It was only there for filming. Something else that's odd is the fact that the traffic on that street (a one-way) actually flows in the opposite direction of the way it is shown in the movie.

For those familiar, this one is a picture of the Mercer House from the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I actually just finished reading it, and I highly recommend it. The book is considered a non-fiction novel, and it's interesting now that we're here to see some of the places that the author mentioned during the book. It was really interesting, as Savannah Dan used to be a policeman here, and has actually talked to the main detective from the book. You'll have to come visit and take his tour to find out what he said!

There are a ton of old churches here in Savannah as well. I chose this picture because it came out the best, but I also have pictures of half a dozen more as well. Savannah is home to the church which has been having Sunday service for the longest consecutively. The First Baptist Church in the downtown area has had Sunday service every Sunday since 1833. The most unique time was when they had Sunday service one Sunday to a group mostly made up of Confederate soldiers, and the following Sunday to a group made up mostly of Union soldiers.


The city is extremely interesting, and we are both looking forward to doing more exploring of it!

Atlanta and Savannah

We spent the majority of last week in Atlanta, staying with friends while we waited for our housing in Savannah to become available. I had never been to Atlanta, so it was definitely interesting to me to see another large city.

One of the first things we saw as we drove into town was a giant peach. It sat atop a tower, and apparently there are quite a few across the town. Peaches are a big deal in Atlanta (not really that much of a surprise), and there are apparently quite a few streets named Peachtree as well.

We did not really visit a lot of the tourist traps (like the Coke Museum), but did see quite a few things. It was interesting to see what buildings had been used for the Olympics in 1996, and the torch platform is still there to this day. Our friend Audrey gave us a brief driving tour of the city, and the downtown as well. The city definitely seems like it would be interesting to explore over time, but honestly it was just nice to hang out with friends from college.

One of the places we did visit while there was the Cyclorama. They don't allow pictures to be taken in there, but it was still a very interesting place. They are a museum to the Civil War in general, but specifically to the Battle of Atlanta in 1864. They have a lot of maps and historical pictures from the battle, but their crown jewel is the 3-story mural depicting the battle. The mural is on the rounded walls of a theatre that was built specifically to show the battle. There is seating inside the room, which rotates in time with a narrator telling the story as well.

After leaving Atlanta, we stayed for one night in a hotel on Hilton Head Island. When I looked at the map to book the hotel, it appeared to be pretty close to where we wanted to be. Whoops. It was not terribly far, but we must have passed at least half a dozen hotels with the same group along the way.

We didn't explore the Island too much, simply because we wanted to get situated at our new apartment on Friday. We're planning to head back there sometime while we are here.

After getting situated in Savannah, we did some exploring this weekend, and I'm hoping to have that written up in the next couple of days. The city is extremely interesting, and we're really enjoying it so far.

Weekend Thoughts for 2/7/10

The Super Bowl was a really good game last night, and congrats to the Saints for winning. Undoubtedly, the party down in the Big Easy will continue for a few days, running into Mardi Gras next week potentially.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• Commercials during the Super Bowl weren't bad, but it seemed to me like every segment had a Bud commercial. Probably would have been better off for everyone if they would invest that money in improving the taste of their beer as opposed to advertising it. 
• The Volkswagen commercial with Stevie Wonder was pretty funny too.
• It's supposed to snow here in Murray again this week, and I'm a bit over it. It doesn't snow a lot, but it does seem to bring a large portion of the city to a stand-still in spite of this fact.
• Anytime there is going to be a fair amount of snow, everyone here in town (and apparently all over the South as well) stocks up on three things: Bread, milk, and eggs. I'm not entirely sure where these three items came from on this topic, as I am used to earthquake preparedness, which is water and canned goods.

We have locked in our next assignment: Savannah, GA. It's a really good size city (over 100K in population), and has quite a bit of history to it as well. Savannah is located right on the Atlantic coast of Georgia, with a lot of other destinations nearby:

• Atlanta - 4 hours
• Jacksonville, FL - 2 hours
• Charleston, SC - 4 hours
• Charlotte, NC - 4 hours
• Orlando, FL - 4 hours

The city really should be interesting, as we are both really big history buffs. And Paula Deen is there too! More excellent food :) We will be there from the first week of March until late June (hopefully anyway!)